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Local identity formation is an important issue in studying borders. This dissertation in human
geography investigates identity construction in a small town of Sortavala, which was annexed to the Soviet Union after the Second World War.
The study focuses on the question how spatial identity has been constructed and the local community has been (re-)positioned in the
Soviet and post-Soviet periods.
ALEXANDER IZOTOV
DISSERTATIONS | ALEXANDER IZOTOV | MAPPING SORTAVALA: LOCAL IDENTITY FORMATION IN A SOVIET... | N
ALEXANDER IZOTOV
MAPPING SORTAVALA:
LOCAL IDENTITY FORMATION IN A SOVIET
AND POST-SOVIET BORDER TOWN
MAPPING SORTAVALA:
LOCAL IDENTITY FORMATION IN A SOVIET
AND POST-SOVIET BORDER TOWN
Alexander Izotov
MAPPING SORTAVALA:
LOCAL IDENTITY FORMATION IN A SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET BORDER TOWN
Publications of the University of Eastern Finland Dissertations in Social Sciences and Business Studies
No 173
University of Eastern Finland Joensuu
2018
Grano Oy Jyväskylä, 2018
Editor in-chief: Kimmo Katajala Editor: Helena Hirvonen
Sales: University of Eastern Finland Library ISBN: 978-952-61-2791-0 (nid.) ISBN: 978-952-61-2792-7 (PDF)
ISSNL: 1798-5749
Izotov, Alexander
Mapping Sortavala: Local Identity Formation in a Soviet and Post-Soviet Border Town
University of Eastern Finland, 2018
Publications of the University of Eastern Finland
Dissertations in Social Sciences and Business Studies; 173 ISBN: 978-952-61-2791-0 (print)
ISSNL: 1798-5749 ISSN: 1798-5749
ISBN: 978-952-61-2792-7 (PDF) ISSN: 1798-5757 (PDF)
ABSTRACT
The present study investigates local identity formation in the town of Sortavala, Republic of Karelia in a historical perspective. The key question of the research is how spatial identity has been constructed and the local community has been (re-)positioned during Soviet and post-Soviet times. The theoretical framework of the study is informed by new trends in human geography, critical geopolitics and, in particular, in the study of borders in the contemporary social and political sciences.
The key approach to the questions under investigation rests upon the concept of positionality, the concept of (un)familiarity and the concept of identity in critical geopolitics. The study analyses methods, which were used by the Soviet local political elite to transform a multi-ethnic community of migrants into a homogenous entity of ‘Soviet men’. One of the instruments used for this in the sealed border town close to the Finnish border was the powerful symbolism of the defender of the ‘sacred’ socialist Homeland. Concerning post-Soviet Sortavala, it is argued that the repositioning of the local community has been impacted by two major interrelated factors: the fundamental socio-political change and the liberalization of the border regime. In this context of particular interest is the role of tourism in identity and region building at the Finnish-Russian border.
The study exposes different sides of local identity construction in Sortavala as part of broader processes of regional and national identity formation in Soviet and Russian Karelia. The dissertation discusses representations and images of
‘Karelianness’ in the specific context of Sortavala. As the thesis argues, cross-border interaction plays the key role in local identity construction as well as production of Karelianness in the 1990s–early 2000s.
Keywords: Local identity construction, (re-)positioning, critical geopolitics, Soviet and post-Soviet identity, concept of border
Izotov, Alexander
Paikallisen identiteetin rakentaminen Sortavalassa neuvostoaikana ja sen jälkeen University of Eastern Finland, 2018
Publications of the University of Eastern Finland
Dissertations in Social Sciences and Business Studies; 173 ISBN: 978-952-61-2791-0 (nid.)
ISSNL: 1798-5749 ISSN: 1798-5749
ISBN: 978-952-61-2792-7 (PDF) ISSN: 1798-5757 (PDF)
TIIVISTELMÄ
Tutkimuksessa analysoidaan paikallisen identiteetin muodostumista Sortavalassa toisen maailmansodan jälkeen. Pääkysymys koskee sitä, miten paikallista identi- teettiä on konstruoitu ja miten paikallisyhteisö on asemoitunut Neuvostoliiton aikana ja sen hajoamisen jälkeen. Tämän yhteiskuntamaantieteen alaan kuuluvan tutkimuksen teoreettinen perusta on rajatutkimuksessa ja kriittisessä geopolitii- kassa.
Tutkimus koostuu neljästä artikkelista ja niiden yhteenvedosta. Siinä tarkastellaan, millä tavoin paikallinen poliittinen eliitti edisti ja muokkasi toisen maailmansodan jälkeen identiteetin rakennusprojektia, jolla Sortavalaan eri puolilta Neuvostoliittoa muuttaneet uudet asukkaat pyrittiin yhdistämään sosialistista kotimaataan puolustavien neuvostoihmisten yhteisöksi. Myös kaupungin suoma- lainen historia ja karjalaisen kulttuurin perintö ovat olleet tämän paikallisen identiteetin muodostuksen aineksia. Neuvostoliiton hajoaminen ja sitä seurannut Suomen ja Venäjän rajan avautuminen vuorovaikutukselle ja yhteistyölle 1990- luvun alussa oli tämän rajakaupungin asemoitumisen ja sen asukkaiden paikallisen identiteetin muotoutumisen kannalta merkittävä käänne. Tutkimuksessa kartoite- taan ja analysoidaan näitä muutosprosesseja ja niiden seurauksia rajakaupungin karjalaiselle ja venäläiselle identiteetille.
Avainsanat: Paikallinen identiteetti, kriittinen geopolitiikka, neuvostoidentiteetti, raja, Sortavala
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Sortavala is a right place of birth for the future scholar in history and geography. It was a great luck for me to get my first lessons in these subjects in the School No. 1 located in the building of the former Finnish primary school (kansakoulu), and by just walking around the streets of the city and traveling along the North Ladoga area. Archaeologists find here traces of ancient population, whose descendants formed Karelian people. Folklorists have collected here runes, which form the basis for the famous epic "Kalevala". Architecture, designed by famous Finnish Architects, together with the wonderful nature, inspired me already early on to think about the themes of my future research. Human geography, above all, is about the study of people. Over the years of my academic life in Finland I visited in Sortavala many times, meeting people, doing interviews with local residents within different projects, reading newspapers in the library. These meetings have left the fondest memories, and I want to convey a word of thanks to my dear fellow townsmen.
This thesis was born due to support and help of many colleagues from the University of Eastern Finland and the Karelian Institute. First and foremost, I would like to thank Professor Heikki Eskelinen, who supervised my work in the Karelian Institute from the very beginning, since mid-1990s. He encouraged my interest in the border studies as well as my research related to my hometown of Sortavala. Heikki’s enthusiasm and insightful comments have been a great support for me during all these years. Besides his academic guidance, he was an enjoyable companion to travel to Russia. I have nice memories about both business and private trips in Russian Karelia, for instance, once I had a privilege to be a guide for his family’s travel to the Archipelago Valaam. I want to thank Professor Markku Tykkyläinen at the Department of Geographical and Historical Studies for his support, sharing his expertise and giving invaluable advices as supervisor throughout my endeavor. Under his leadership I have learnt much about new discipline for me at that time. His contribution to my academic life in Finland cannot be overestimated. My very special thanks are due to my supervisor Professor Ilkka Liikanen without whose continuous support and guidance this thesis would not have been possible. I cannot express enough my deepest gratitude for his inspiring discussions and leading advises. He not only spent countless hours commenting on my texts, but also constantly supported my research work at different stages.
Trained as a historian in Petrozavodsk and Leningrad State Universities, after having moved to Finland, I studied human geography at the University of Joensuu, and later continued my studies as a post-graduate student at the University of Eastern Finland. In addition to Professor Markku Tykkyläinen, I am also deeply grateful to my other teachers in human geography: the late Professor Perttu
Vartiainen, Professor Jarmo Kortelainen, Professor Ari Lehtinen, Adjunct professor Paul Fryer, as well to my former colleagues at the Karelian Institute Dr Jukka Oksa, Dr Antti Laine and many others. I was fortunate to work with Dr Jussi Laine, whose high-level expertise in the field of the border studies made this partnership both productive and joyful. In addition, he wrote a preface for my article on Soviet Sortavala.
At its early stages, my research on Sortavala received financial support from the Academy of Finland in the frame of the project “Reconstitution of North-West Russia as an economic, social and political space: The role of cross-border interaction” (2007–2011).
I am also grateful to the pre-examiners of my manuscript, Adjunct professor Pirjo Jukarainen of the University of Tampere and Adjunct professor Vesa Rautio of the University of Turku for their useful and detailed statements, which helped me to finalize the manuscript. I want to thank Professor James Scott (Karelian Institute, UEF) and Professor Elisabeth Valley (University of Quebec) for comments.
Professor Akihiro Iwashita and Paul Richardson (Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University) and the editors of the Eurasian Border Review as well as Elena Nikiforova deserve my gratitude for supporting the publication of my work on Soviet Sortavala.
Work over several years with the colleagues at the Karelian Institute have created an atmosphere of inspiration and personal closeness for me. I am grateful to all of you: Olga Davydova-Minguet, Pirjo Pöllänen, Tuulikki Kurki, Minna Piippo- nen, Evgenia Prokhorova, Tiina Soininen, Ismo Björn, Pekka Suutari, Joni Virkkunen, Matti Fritsch, Dmitry Zimin, Driss Habti and others.
My sincere thanks are also due to my friends Juha Kotilainen and Jukka Timonen who have not only passion for science but also for music. They have supported my music projects for more than two decades. I appreciate this opportunity to make our free time also creative.
Several members of the administrative staff at the University of Eastern Finland have had a supportive and friendly attitude to my relatively long research process.
Here, my special thanks are due to Maria Venäläinen, Merja Ikonen, Lea Kervinen and Nora Huurinainen. My appreciation to Rupert Hasterok who has edited and corrected my tarnished English – I owe a lot to him, and I have learnt a lot from him.
Finally, I would like to thank my family, especially my mother Eine. I also appreciate the interest and support of all my Russian, Finnish and Canadian relatives.
Joensuu, 27 March 2018 Alexander Izotov
CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ... 5
TIIVISTELMÄ ... 7
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ... 9
1 INTRODUCTION: RESEARCH PROBLEM, PERSPECTIVES, AND DESIGN ... 13
1.1 Setting the scene: Sortavala ...14
1.2 Research problem: discursive construction of local identity ...19
1.3 Research perspectives: conceptualising place, positionality and identity construction ...23
1.3.1 Place and identity ...24
1.3.2 Territoriality, positionality and borders ...28
1.3.3 The multilayered construction of identities ...32
1.4 Methodology and methods ...36
1.5 Empirical material ...39
2 CONTEXTUALISING LOCAL IDENTITY FORMATION ... 42
2.1 Local identity construction in historical perspective ...42
2.1.1 The Soviet project: local peculiarities of ideological identity construction ...42
2.1.2 Post-Soviet change: new patterns of conceptualising identity...46
2.1.3 Geopolitical framings of bordering ...49
2.2 Understanding Soviet and post-Soviet spatial identities ...50
2.3 Sortavala in the regional framework of Karelia ...58
2.4 Contextualising key-questions ...62
3 SUMMARY OF THE INDIVIDUAL PAPERS... 68
4 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS ... 73
4.1 A new approach to local identity ...73
4.2 Local identity construction: specificities of Soviet and post-Soviet identity politics ...74
4.3 Place and identity ...75
4.4 The discursive construction of national identity ...77
4.5 Effects of the shifts in geopolitical contexts ...78
4.6 The changing functions and symbolism of the border ...79
4.7 Summary ...80
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOURCES ... 83
ARTICLES ... 93
LIST OF MAPS
Map 1. Sortavala in its Territorial Context ...15
1 INTRODUCTION: RESEARCH PROBLEM, PERSPECTIVES, AND DESIGN
This is a study of local identity construction in Sortavala, a town located near the Finnish-Russian border in the Karelian Republic, in Northwest Russia. By approaching the issue in an historical as well as contemporary perspective, the study attempts to contribute to broader scholarly discussions on the changing meaning of borders and territoriality. Shifting meanings of territoriality will be interpreted in the light of local identity politics in post-war Sortavala. As part of the newly independent Finnish nation-state, the town had experienced rapid growth in the 1920s and 1930s. After the Second World War, Sortavala, together with the entire Finnish Karelia region, was annexed by the Soviet Union, and its Finnish population replaced by migrants from various regions of the Soviet Union. It became part of a closed border zone that would only be opened up after 1991.
In the years between the end of the Second World War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Finland was regularly described as a country within the Soviet sphere of influence, partly because of its geographical location but mainly because of its economic and political links to its big neighbour. This geopolitical image of Finland strongly contrasts with local perceptions in Sortavala, for whose citizens, in accordance with the official discourse, the Finnish-Soviet border symbolised a frontline in the political and ideological struggle between socialism and capitalism.
A sealed-off border zone effectively separated Sortavalans from their Finnish neighbours and cross-border contacts were practically non-existent until the very end of the Soviet period.
It was only in the late 1980s, after Gorbachev’s perestroika had eased the Communist Party’s control and censorship, that the local media started to reflect ordinary citizens’ worldviews which contradicted the dominant official discourses.
At the time, the local political elite became increasingly disoriented as a result of the apparently unpredictable ideological and political turn that the communist party was taking on the national level. The mostly Russian-speaking inhabitants of Sortavala were now allowed to think that the nearby border was more than a
‘sacred’ barrier protecting the Soviet nation from external threats and that the town could play a role in cross-border interaction or even as a gateway to Europe, ‘our common home’ in the well-known words of Mikhail Gorbachev. When the first Finnish visitors appeared in town they were mostly perceived by the public and the media as good neighbours and future economic partners. The impact of these changes on the public image of Finland has been profound, and the resulting, more liberal border regime has since crucially contributed to the reshaping of everyday life in Sortavala.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, crossing the border became relatively easy and Finnish influences much more visible in many spheres of life. Sortavalans, and notably the local political elite, have reassessed their interests and attitudes with respect to their Finnish neighbours and thus participated in processes of reframing the political, socio-economic and cultural space of the borderland. The present study intends to open micro-perspectives on Finnish-Russian relations and border-related processes under conditions of European integration by emphasising the role of local actors. It will focus on the various attempts to reposition this local community in an historical context that transformed the closed border zone into an area marked by emergening cross-border interaction.
Sortavala’s diverse and complex development during the 70 years that followed the Second World War allows us to analyse local peculiarities in the construction of its territorial identity. What makes Sortavala specific compared to similar border towns?1 Here, of particular interest is the town’s Finnish legacy, which has profoundly shaped its mental landscape. Although this study is rooted in human geography, it draws inspiration also from debates in other disciplines, such as history, political science and urban studies. Theories and concepts elaborated in the field of border studies form the core of the theoretical framework.
1.1 SETTING THE SCENE: SORTAVALA
Sortavala is located on the shores of the northwestern part of Lake Ladoga, Europe’s largest lake (see Map 1). The municipal district of Sortavala extends over 2100 sq km and shares a 127-km long border with Finland. As already mentioned, after the Finns had left, the city was literally empty, while houses and the infrastructure, including production facilities, remained largely intact. Starting in 1944 its territory filled up with newly arriving migrants. However, since the census undertaken in the late 1950s, the population of the Sortavala district has regularly decreased – from about 72,000 in 1959 to 35,000 in 2002 and further to 32,287 in 2010 (for more details see the Table in Article 1, Section 6.3). Sortavala’s urban population has slightly declined, from 22,579 inhabitants in 1989 to 19,235 in 2010.
In the early 2000s, Russians accounted for 80.8 per cent of the population of Sortavala district, followed by Belorussians (8.6), Karelians (3.2), Ukrainians (3.1) and Finns (1.2); other nationalities made up 3.1 per cent.2 However, too much should not be made of these data because these categories go back to the Soviet
1 The formerly Finnish Vyborg, today part of Leningrad oblast, and formerly German Königsberg, which became Soviet Kaliningrad, spring to mind, along with the Baltic States and a number of cities in West- ern Ukraine, notably Lviv (L’vov in Soviet times). However, in terms of direct comparison, Königsberg- Kaliningrad, a city much larger than Sortavala, was to a large extent, destroyed during the war, and the populations of Western Ukraine and the Baltics mostly stayed put.
2 See http://gov.karelia.ru/gov/Power/Committee/National/district07.html?print=1 (accessed 8 September 2016).
nationality policy and rely more or less on self-ascription.3 Sortavala’s citizens are relatively well-educated. More than half are graduates of vocational secondary schools (tekhnikum) and every sixth has received higher education.
Map 1. Sortavala in its Territorial Context
Historically, Sortavala has experienced frequent processes of re-bordering in the context of changing international relations in general and Russian geopolitics in particular. In more recent interpretations, the town has become an example illustrating cross-border region-building on the Finnish-Russian border under the special conditions of post-Soviet EU–Russia relations and the impact of changing border regimes on the socio-economic, political and cultural fields in the Finnish- Russian borderlands.
It is believed, that the name Karelia was first mentioned in the eighth century. In the twelfth century, a fortress known under the Finnish name of Linnamäki was
3 In Soviet times, nationality was an obligatory mention in the (internal) passport, but often a matter of personal preference, notably for descendants of a mixed marriage or those who expected to gain from it.
In post-Soviet times, at first it did not figure in identity documents and now most likely follows similar criteria of choice; individuals do not necessarily use it for self-identification.
built at a distance of four kilometres from the present centre of Sortavala, on a rocky hill (Paasovuori) near the confluence of the Tohmajoki and Helylä Rivers, by people of Finno-Ugric origin who later came to form the ethnic group of Karelians.4 The political situation at the time was less clear, because states in the modern sense did not yet exist (Korpela 2004, 17). Medieval rulers of Novgorod and from Sweden made attempts to exercise control over the region of Ladoga Karelia. In the thirteenth and fourteenth century, this led to the creation of a local parish under the influence of the Orthodox Church, for tax purposes and as a sort of administrative unit. The Nikolsko-Serdovolskii pogost was located on the island of Riekkalansaari, on the opposite side of the Läppäjarvi inlet of Lake Ladoga in present-day Sortavala. Its name is mentioned in Swedish (1468) and Russian (1500) documents and it commanded a vast territory. More importantly, it was close to a market place located on the water trade route connecting Northern Europe with the centers of Eastern Slavs and areas beyond in the East and South. The parish was later moved to the mainland, to the present location of Sortavala, while the island is now situated on the outskirts of the town5.
During its early existence, the North Ladoga area was an arena of conflict between the two major regional powers of the time, Sweden and Russia. In 1617, its territory was annexed by the newly emerging territorial state of Sweden and, in 1632, Sortavala was given the status of a town (the year still counts as the official date of the town’s foundation). After that, Sortavala remained under Swedish authority for almost a century. As a result of the Great Northern War (1700–1721), the North Ladoga region then became part of the Russian empire after the Treaty of Nystad, along with the rest of so-called Old Finland, and Sortavala changed its name into the Russian Serdobol.6 After 1812, and until the early twentieth century, Sortavala belonged to the Grand Duchy of Finland, at the time an autonomous part of the Russian empire (see e.g. Katajala 2012).
After 1917, Sortavala became part of newly independent Finland. In the 1920s and 1930s, the town underwent significant changes, benefitting from a rather dynamic economy (Björn 2001, 33). Its architecture was greatly transformed through the erection of many new buildings. In addition to the further expansion of services and the production of consumer goods, the two mainstays of the local economy, the town saw a significant development of wood-processing industries.
Sortavala symbolised the arrival of progress in the formerly backward region of Finnish Karelia. In terms of identity politics, efforts by the Finnish educated elite focussed on promoting a strong national identity and strengthening national unity, the more so where Karelian and Russian cultural influences were strongly present
4 For more details on Karelian people see Klement’ev 2008, on the ethnic borders in Karelia see Loginov 2008.
5 A comprehensive history of Sortavala to date is the richly illustrated monograph (760 pages) written by the Russian historian Aleksandr Krasnolutskii (2012), cf. Kuujo, Tiainen & Karttunen (1970).
6Etymologically, the town’s Russian name may be related to the Russian word serdobolnyi, ‘tender- hearted, compassionate’.
as in North Ladoga, especially in Salmi and Suojärvi (see Heikkinen 1989; Paasi 1996a).7
The urban environment of Sortavala’s centre still resembles a medium-sized Finnish town of the 1920s and 1930s. During the Finnish period, several famous Finnish architects designed stone buildings in the popular styles of the time, which were influenced by Jugendstil, neoclassicism and even functionalism. Since white- plastered houses dominated the urban landscape, Finns call Sortavala the ‘white town on Lake Ladoga’. Numerous old Finnish wooden houses still present an interesting and sometimes unique design, although many others have fallen into decay (see Ryvkin 1992; Izotov 2008). The Finnish period was also characterised by the creation of parks and gardens with rare species of trees and other flora. Today, they are in poor condition, if not completely destroyed.
After the annexation of these territories by the USSR in 1944 Sortavala became an administrative district within Soviet Karelia. The Finnish and Karelian inhabitants left and were replaced by settlers from various regions of the Soviet Union, which completely changed the social and ethnic composition of the population (Hakamies 2006). Sortavala thus became a town of migrants, most of whom had no previous ties with the region or the town. The adaptation of these newcomers to their new environment has played a key role in local processes of identity formation, which is the focus of the present study. It has shaped the perceptions of the local natural and human-made landscapes as well as the attitudes towards the Finnish-Karelian cultural legacy in a context of the Sovietisation of the area (for details see Article 1).
As a result of the annexation, regional socio-economic development took a decisive turn in the late 1940s. First, the new authorities had to incorporate the local economy into the Soviet economic system. The industries were reorganized and expanded. In particular, the manufacturing of skis and furniture at Helylä, a suburb of Sortavala, was developed as the leading production complex, a task that greatly benefitted from an industrial infrastructure developed in Finnish times. At the same time, Sortavala became a garrison town within a closed border zone, a status that widely influenced the life of local residents. Against this background, the liberalisation of the border regime after the collapse of the Soviet Union had a profound impact on Sortavala’s identity. Together with the ideological shifts that marked the period of transition, Soviet symbols and meanings disappeared from local narratives and this opened the way for processes of adopting a new national and local identity.
The dramatic post-war shift in the ethnic and cultural make-up of Sortavala’s population (Hakamies 2006, 36; Mel’nikova 2005) led to a situation where most of the new settlers experienced their new home as alien. They produced new
7 Salmi is a settlement located on the northern shore of Lake Ladoga, while Suojärvi is a small town and administrative centre to the northeast of Sortavala, today part of Suoiarvskii Municipal District. Both lie on the territory annexed by the Soviet Union in 1944.
‘readings’ of the local natural and cultural landscapes, which show many parallels with those found in other Soviet towns with a similar history, notably Kaliningrad.
In a context where information about the earlier period was rare, partly because of Soviet censorship, a remarkable feature of these new interpretations was the creation of myths pertaining to local landmarks (that were destroyed to an exceptionally low degree during the war). There existed, for example, rumours in post-war Sortavala that the locally well-known villa of Dr Winter had been used as a residence by the Finnish military leader and statesman Mannerheim.8 As in Kaliningrad, local buildings received typical Soviet names chosen from a small repertoire, such as Rodina (‘Motherland’) and Zaria (‘Dawn’) for the town’s cinemas, and cemeteries of the former inhabitants were destroyed by the new inhabitants (Kostiashov et al. 2002, 164, 165, 167 and 170). While numerous other towns and regions experienced a similar fate in the aftermath of the Second World War, Sortavala’s destiny can be described as unique in that its former Finnish population was entirely and rapidly evacuated. In Kaliningrad, Germans partly continued to live in the city for several years after it had been occupied by Soviet forces. Similarly, in the Baltic republics and Western Ukraine, the make-up of local populations changed to a much lesser degree. There was almost no such continuity of local memories in Sortavala and it was only during the early 1990s that former Finnish inhabitants and their descendants started to visit the town in significant numbers. During the same period, Kaliningrad saw the development of similar forms of ‘nostalgic tourism’.
Another peculiarity of Sortavala’s post-war situation was the survival of most of the urban and rural infrastructure. The newcomers’ unfamiliarity with this environment as well as with local and regional traditions made it, however, easier for the Soviet political elite to plan and implement the reshaping of local landscapes in line with Soviet standards and requirements. As in Kaliningrad, the inherited buildings and parks were grossly neglected and parts of the town were transformed by the erection of Soviet-type buildings. The countryside suffered from similar neglect and changes. The official rationale for this was that the older infrastructure represented shortcomings of capitalism and the capitalist way of life (Kostiashov et al. 2002; Shaginian 2004). In fact, as oral history researches has shown (Mel’nikova 2005; Kostiashov et al. 2002), feelings of alienation coexisted in the minds of the Soviet migrants with admiration for the beautiful and comfortable residential buildings and infrastructure. Interestingly, Finnish visitors in the early 1990s in turn experienced similar sentiments of unfamiliarity and perceived the town as ugly and even dangerous (see Article 4).
There can be no doubt that the post-war geopolitical reconfigurations had a deep impact on the ethnic, socio-economic and cultural development of Sortavala, as well as on the Republic of Karelia as a whole. This dissertation attempts to
8 Similarly, Russian settlers in Kaliningrad held that some older buildings there had been the private residence of very high-ranking German military officers (Popadin 1998).
contribute to a better understanding of the meanings of Karelianness and the concept of Karelia in Soviet and post-Soviet era. The dramatic history of Karelia and the Karelians has lately attracted much interest from researchers. Both Finnish and Russian scholars, sometimes in collaborative efforts (e.g. Hämynen and Paskov 2012), have studied the consequences of these changes for Karelia describing it as a
‘nation split by the border’. An analysis of how local identity was forged in Sortavala must, however, take into account this wider regional framework, shaped by both the Finnish and Karelian past and the Soviet legacy of identity politics. All of them have left traces in the narratives identified in documents from Sortavala’s local authorities and in local media publications, which have been the main sources used in this study. Inversely, these documents can be used to illustrate the role of the local community in wider processes of identity formation in the Karelian Republic, Northwest Russia and, even beyond, in contemporary Russia. In more general terms, the present investigation aims at unpacking the role of local identity in the legitimation of political power in Soviet and post-Soviet times. For this purpose, the focus is on the discursive fields which have shaped debates about identity and the institutional frameworks which have been vital for identity construction. The political relevance of this approach is obvious for the ongoing debates on cross-border regionalisation and Russia’s national identity.
1.2 RESEARCH PROBLEM: DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION OF LOCAL IDENTITY
This dissertation examines identity construction and (re-)positioning of the local community of Sortavala from the late 1940s to the early 2010s. The core theme is the change in the geopolitical and identity narratives following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The study investigates change in the everyday life and sense of place of the border town in both historical and contemporary perspectives.
More particularly, the analysis attempts to clarify how a local sense of place has been constructed through narratives and activities promoted by political elites and shaped by everyday practices of local residents and how, over time, a Soviet and post-Soviet territorial identity has been contested, preserved, and altered.
This study takes use of approaches to geopolitics informed by the theories of discourse analysis in the sense that geopolitical reasoning is being understood as a practical process relying on ‘remarkable assumptions about places and their particular identities’ (O’Tuathail and Agnew 1992, 194). These theoretical approaches understand identity as being negotiated and contextually determined by linguistic interaction (Francis 2007, 36). According to De Cillia et al. national identities are discursively ‘produced, reproduced, transformed and destructed’
(1999, 149).
The present study follows the presumption of discourse theory that all objects and actions are meaningful, and that their meaning is consulted by systems of rules (Howarth et al. 2000, 2). Most approaches to discourse theory rest on the underlying premise that language does not merely reflect social realities, but it is involved in the construction of these realities. Despite the different and even conflicting approaches to discourse theory it has established itself as a highly influential framework for inquiry and analysis.
As a research based on the analysis of media and documentary texts, this study operates with categories of discourse, narrative and text. Discourse as an analytical concept emerged in 1950s and 1960s alongside with a development of structuralist approaches to theorizing language. Its proponents argued that earlier research had focused on linguistics of discourse and ignored discourse as communicative practice and as ideology (Fowler 1987). In the humanities and in the social sciences discourse has been linked to the theories of power and state. Famously, according to social theorist Michel Foucault (1972, 77) discourse is related to power as it operates by rules of exclusion. He defined discourses as knowledge systems that inform social and governmental technologies constituting power in society. Post- structuralism has taken critical position towards the universal structures that were the object of structuralist theory. For Stuart Hall (1997, 6) ‘Discourses are ways of referring to or constructing knowledge about a practical topic of practice; a cluster (or formation) of ideas, images and practices, which provide ways of talking about, forms of knowledge and conduct associated with, a particular topic, social activity or institutional site in society’.
Describing a difference between structuralist and post-structuralis approaches Fiske (1996, 3) notes that at theoretical level, ‘discourse’ relocates the whole process of making and using meanings from an abstracted structural systems into particular historical, social, and political conditions. Discourse, then, is language in social use. Norman Fairclough (2003, 124) takes this notion further by arguing that social change often seems to be initiated and driven by changes in discourse.
Discourses include representations of how things are and have been, as well as imaginaries – representations of how things might or could or should be.
Discourses as imaginaries may also come to inculcated as new ways of being, new identities (Fairclough 2001, 233; 2003, 207). As Jorgensen and Phillips (2002, 47) have pointed out, discourse analysis can be used in detailed empirical analysis as well. They see it as a tool for empirical analysis of identity construction and presentation. In its textual analysis my research follows mostly this post- structuralist approach.
When elaborating the concept of narrative, Margaret Somers (1994) argues that the social life is typically ‘storied’ and that it is through narrativity that we come to know, understand and make sense of the social world and constitute social identities. Within the post-structural agenda, narrative is a cognitive process by which the subject constructs meaningful realities. Narratives are understood as
minimal linguistic (written or verbal) acts. The narrative turn in the social sciences means shift from structure to structuration, and concentration not in how narratives are structured, but how they work (Livholts and Tamboukou 2015).
In analytical terms, narratives include several dimensions. Ontological narratives, for instance, are being used by social actors to make sense of their lives, while public narratives are attached to cultural and institutional formations that are larger than the individual. Margaret Somers also distinguish master narratives, which in the context of the Soviet period studied here, appear as epic dramas between Capitalism and Communism, or the Individual and Society (Somers 1994, 617–20). Similarly, the national imagined communities are changing continually together with the narratives that constitute their collective cultural discourses (Bhabha 1990). In both cases identity narratives are thus constructed politically in the process of the distribution of social power in society (Somers 1994).
My study applies this approach to media and documentary narratives by asking how local identity construction works in terms of distribution of social power in the local community of Sortavala.
As understood here, term ‘text’ is a wider notion than the printed or written word. Text can be a shorthand for any cultural object. Fairclough (2003, 21) interpretes texts as parts of social events. He argues that ‘we can broadly distinguish two causal ‘powers’ which shape texts: on the one hand, social structures and social practices; on the other hand, social agents, the people involved in social events’ (ibid. 22). This study deals with analysis and interpretations of media (newspaper) texts. We can identify two tendencies in modern social and cultural theories in the field of media research: focus on textuality and discursivity (see Barret 1991, 124). While the former focuses on a study of text in its own terms as disconnected with prior reality, the latter concentrates on the social contexts in examining texts. As applied here, the concept of discourse seeks to combine the analysis of media texts with text production and text perception. Discursive approach to media text analysis enable us to investigate social and cultural changes in society and media texts as an active part in the process of constructing new social and cultural identities (Langer 1997, 10). In this sense, the concept of text and the concept of discourse are interrelated. Discourse evidences the social effects of text and therefore is always more than text (Müller 2013, 54).
In my approach, discourse analysis refers to the practice of analysing empirical raw materials and information as discursive forms. This approach has been used for Soviet political discourse in the works of Patrick Sériot (1986) who has argued that the transformations of the Russian language as a result of the Soviet modus operandi represent not only a new style but a new discourse. Sériot’s analysis of texts composed by Soviet leaders for the Party’s Congresses permits the identification of essential features of ideological discourse behind the semantic, grammatical and lexical peculiarities of Soviet ‘newspeak’ (Stepanov 1995). In the present context, discourse analysis is used to examine the peculiarities of both Soviet and post-
Soviet ideologies on the local level and the mechanisms at work in political discourses aimed at constructing identity and a sense of place.
Soviet identity reflects complex ideological and historical narratives, including transformed views and values of pre-revolutionary Russia (Kharkhordin 1999;
Afanasjev 1995, 1–14). This continuity in Russian traditions will be taken into consideration when it comes to examining official documents and media publications from Sortavala during the post-war period. Similar continuity can be traced in post-Soviet discourses. This has become especially obvious since the early 2000s, when attitudes about the results of the collapse of the USSR have become more hesitant (Bassin and Kelly 2012, 8). This means that not all myths of ‘Soviet’
origin were replaced in the 1990s. The present study makes an effort to understand this relationship between Soviet and post-Soviet cultures and identities.
The period that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union has often been described as a transition from communism to democracy and from a state-run to a free-market economy. However, on the ideological level, main trends of the late perestroika period extended well into the first half of the 1990s, although earlier references to socialist or communist ideas often disappeared. The new Russian political elite produced discourses on democracy and capitalism that strongly contrasted with the Soviet values of earlier decades. Post-Soviet society was seen as an inevitable result of evolution that leads from the socialist planned economy to a market economy and from an authoritarian political system to democracy. As a critical comment to this view, Sergei Prozorov has called post-Soviet identity
‘transitional’ and ‘hybrid’ (Prozorov 2006b, 23). In contrast to this view, we have witnessed the return of patriotic narratives of the Soviet era which have been reinforced by national symbols, such as the state hymn and state emblem, and the glorifying the Russian and Soviet past. Under Putin and Medvedev this patriotic rhetoric has become an essential part of post-Soviet discourse. In fact, this nationalist reaffirmation can be seen as a sign of identity crisis into which Russia has entered in the early 1990s, or as Stephen White has pointed out: ‘Russians, by the late 1990s, had lost an ideology and not yet found a focus for their various identities.’ (White 1998, 388).
In the aftermath of the Cold War, the Russian-Finnish borderland has experienced a sea change. As James W. Scott (2013, 83) has argued, formal and semi-formalised cross-border co-operation has capitalised on the promotion of the idea of a ‘common space’ typical to EU rhetoric. An examination of local discourses on this border will allow for a clarification of the specific mechanism at work in identity construction in the border area under conditions of newly emerging cross- border interaction. Here, the focus will be on processes of place-making in the context of local identity politics during the post-Soviet period: to what degree local actors are identifying Karelia in general and Sortavala in particular as part of a transnational space within the EU–Russia borderlands? This aspect will be studied by examining media narratives describing border-related everyday activities of
representatives from the local authorities and civil society organizations, border guards, business people and other residents.
Part of the above-mentioned sea change can be understood as a revision of traditional definitions of ‘us’ and ‘them’, which have marked Sortavala’s history since the Second World War. To what extent did Sortavalans conceive of their Finnish neighbours as an Other and a counter-image of themselves during the Soviet period? And to what extent does their self-image in post-Soviet time share characteristics with both older and more recent Russian identifications? Hopefully, Sortavala’s example will also offer a better understanding of how the suddenly changed geopolitical role of a border affects boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ on the local level. In this respect, particular attention will be paid to cross-border interaction since the early 1990s and its economic, social and cultural consequences for both informal cross-border contacts and officially sanctioned institutionalised forms of co-operation, such as those funded by the EU programmes TACIS and Interreg. This will include a study of how public opinion, as reflected in local newspaper articles, has changed with regard to these issues, to what extent cross- border interaction has stimulated interest in local and regional development in contrast to the indifference that characterised the Soviet period when the central government exercised tight control over it. Another facet of this question concerns the construction of identity in the micro-context of local everyday life and the relation of these local social practices to the hegemonic discourse produced at the national level (Müller 2008, 333–4), that have given rise to new modes of dominant and subordinated identities in the borderland.
1.3 RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES: CONCEPTUALISING PLACE, POSITIONALITY AND IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION
Most contemporary theories in the social sciences have been elaborated in reference to the social realities of democratic post-industrial societies. This represents a great challenge for those who study societies characterised by different societal and economic parameters. The present investigation of processes related to the construction of territorial identity in the Soviet Union and present-day Russia is faced with exactly this difficulty. To give but one example, the relationship between the global and the local, which is at the heart of contemporary debates among geographers, is not of the same importance for the study of Soviet and even post- Soviet Russia. This applies, of course, even more to such popular ideas as
‘placelessness’ and ‘nonplace’ (Relph 1976; Augé 1995), whose origin is linked to the analysis of processes said to be characteristic of the ‘disneyfied’ world of
‘supermodernity’. Conceptual frameworks of this kind have to be adapted and applied carefully to be of any use for analysing place and identity in the Russian context.
1.3.1 Place and identity
The revival of the concept of place goes back to the late 1970s, when humanistic geographers developed a new approach in reaction to the positivist spatial analyses and their quantitative methods that had dominated geography in the 1960s and early 1970s.9 Whereas the earlier concept of space referred mainly to the geometric qualities of physical environments and their structural parameters, the revised cconcept of place focused on the lived experience of those who inhabit a territory.
In this view place is being understood as a centre of individually felt values and meanings or as a locality of emotional attachment and felt significance (Pred 1984, 279). Place in this sense does not simply designate a particular location but is understood as a meaningful site that combines location, locale and a sense of place (Agnew 1987; Cresswell 2009, 169). It thus significantly differs from two other related concepts of human geography, namely space and landscape.
The concept of place refers to three dimensions: materiality, meaning and practice. Materiality is represented by locale: buildings, streets, places of worship etc. Meaning, both individual and shared, calls attention to the feelings or emotions evoked by a place, producing a sense of place based on mediation and representation and which is always open to counter-meanings shaped by other representations. Practices, finally, make reference to human activities and experiences that have an impact on the possible meanings of a place. All three dimensions are closely interconnected. People shape the (material) topography of places through the meanings they intend to convey to them, but their practices may or may not conform to those meanings. In Sortavala, for example, the dramatic geopolitical changes brought about by the Second World War resulted in an almost total transformation of locale and in the creation of a radically different, new sense of place, after the area’s former population had been replaced by newcomers from various regions of the Soviet Union.
Humanistic geographers, basically, see reality as a construct of experience that involves the creation of feelings and thoughts (Tuan 1977, 9). Their approaches thus allow for a better understanding of how people relate to the environment and make it into a place (Cresswell 2009, 172). Place in this sense does not refer to some specific location, an objectified everyday environment of individuals or even an administrative framework, but is seen as a unique web of social and material spatio-temporal life connections and associated meanings emerging on the basis of the life-world of individuals (Paasi 1996b, 103). In addition to the Western scool of geographers that ties geographical locations with emotions and thoughts, I have paid great attention to the Russin humanistic geography. In particular, the present study (as well as my previous publications e.g. Izotov 2008) was inspired by works
9 On humanistic geography as a reaction to geographical positivism, see, among others, Seamon (1979).
of Dmitry Zamiatin, who is a founder of the Russian school of humanistic geography. 10
Human geography emphasizes links between place and people in different ways. Essentialist classical approaches postulate a genius loci, that is intellectual, spiritual and emotional ties linking human beings with a particular place characterised by specific qualities which make people feel that they are rooted in it.
By contrast, anti-essentialist approaches see such a sense of place as being the product of social action and economic mechanisms (Harvey 2000, 194). David Harvey has concentrated on the analysis of social processes involved in the construction of place (Harvey 1993, 5), and Doreen Massey has defined place as
‘social relations stretched over space’ (Massey 1994, 23) and paid particular attention to social differentiation through gender, class, age and race. Spatial theory analyses people’s sense of place in terms of images, sensorial perceptions, signs and their meanings. Looking at Sortavala’s post-war history through the lens of interpretative geography thus means to engage in an analysis of meanings in a specific context (Eyles 1988, 2). Fundamentally, new cultural geography sees space as a social product and territory as a social construction. The present study is particularly interested in examining the interrelation between the conceptualisation of place and identity.
The categories of locality, place, region and territory, as well as more generally the concept of space, have all come under closer examination in recent academic debates, notably within geography, sociology, history and anthropology. The concept of locality, which has played a key role in human geography since the 1980s (see Massey 1984; Cooke 1989) and received a lot of attention in debates on postmodernism (Gregory 1989; Harvey 1989), has been productively explored in novel studies of place by using it as a tool to describe places where people spend their everyday lives. Theories of locality make it possible to combine spatial and social approaches in the study of local communities and processes of modernisation pertaining to civil society. Cooke has spoken of ‘local narratives ungoverned by general rules, critical of the grand institutions and structures of thoughts which are expressive of modern society’ (Cooke 1990, 94). In his interpretation, modernism has neglected the local dimension, whereas postmodernism ‘shifts the pivot of creativity from top down to bottom up’ (ibid. 115). Alan Pratt (1991), in turn, has provided regional studies with a more culturally grounded perspective by analysing localities as specific discursive formations.
Eduard Casey (1993) has expounded a phenomenological approach to place, space, spatial perception, embodiment and the built environment. He has crucially
10 Research interests of Zamiatin include humanistic geography, imaginative geography, geo-culturology et cetera (see for more detail pp. 34–35). He created the original theory modeling geographical images, applicable in the sphere of regional policy. Zamiatin has developed and is implementing a programme of field studies images of cities and territories of Russia. He created a methodology for the identification, development and promotion of local and regional images.
asked how our embodied existence is rooted in place and how this shapes our existence in the world. He claims that place is primary because space and time are subordinated to it. In his examination of human experience, Casey thus distinguishes the abstractness of space from the lived concreteness of place.11 In a similar vein, the geographer David Seamon (1979) has argued that places are intensely embodied and dramatic, because everyday practices, such as driving a car, create regular patterns, a time-space habitual routine.
The idea of place as a social construct has also been pursued by another strong trend in human geography, which has focused on the role of power in the construction, reproduction and contestation of place and its meanings. In The Production of Space (1991), Henri Lefebvre has conceived space as a reproduction of social relations. He has shown that there are different modes of producing space, that is spatialisation, from natural or ‘absolute’ space to more complex, socially produced spatialities, or social space (Cresswell 2004). Sociologist Anthony Giddens famously argues for a theory of structuration that approaches time and space from actors perspective (Giddens 1981). In contrast to the views of structuralists, such as Althusser, who considered agents as “bearers” of structures, structuration theory points out that they are active participants. The agents’s activity within the social system, space and time is defined as interaction. It is
“constantly reconstituted within different areas of time-space” (Giddens 1984, 86).
When creating his temporal and spatial approach to action Giddens was influenced by Torsten Hägerstrand’s time-geography. Hägerstrand's introduced humanistic perspectives into geography, which contributed to new critical approaches in geography (see Hägerstrand 1973; Claval 2007). My study attempts to follow this critical approach in human geography focusing equally on time and space.
Structuration theory has criticised human geography for its static perception of place. Interpreting Giddens’s theory, Allan Pred has argued that place is not merely an object for individually felt values and meanings but a process where the activities of people and institutions produce and are being produced by social structures that are saturated with power. In his interpretation, place cannot be understood without the geographical operation of power, and social structure provides the context for objects and humans in place (Pred 1984, 279, 282).
Similarly, this study uses the framework of the structuration theory selectively in order to sensitize the study process. It focuses on contextually situated actions in the process of identity construction, emphasizing i.e. the role of social structures, actors and institutions. Another aspect, which makes the structuration theory relevant for this study is its consideration of language as a tool from which to view society.
Importantly, spatial analysis of the identity formation in Sortavala has to be framed in the concept of region. Since the 1970s, the study of regions has been
11 Eduard Casey (1997) has also contributed to an understanding of the genealogy of the idea of place by tracing its history from ancient philosophy to postmodernism.
characterized by two approaches: the classical one, emphasizing objective realities and economic factors in the shaping space, and the lived space one, interested in images, representations, signs, symbols, and meaning (Claval 2007). Regional geographers today still continue looking for approches to understand the social and symbolic construction of space. Meanwhile, there is no commonly acceptable transdisciplinary definition of region (Schmitt-Egner 2002). For Michael Keating (1998), “region is an elusive concept, covering a variety of territorial levels and a range of social contents. A minimal definition would present it as intermediate territorial level, between the state and the locality” (ibid. 9). Paasi (2011) suggested
“that regions are historically contingent social processes that become institutionalized as part of the wider regional transformation and which may ultimately de-institutionalize, in practice merge with other regional spaces or dissolve into smaller units” (ibid. 10–11). To Paasi regional identity is a key element in the making of regions as social/political spaces.
In the context of the present study, it cannot be stressed enough that the meaning of place and identity are strongly connected. Place can be seen as a major element of individual and collective identity. While individual identities are produced in particular places and in relation to others, collective identities of place refer to ‘the predominantly socio-cultural perception and definition of space’
(Jenkens 2005, 20). The relation between place and identity has been explored in a wide range of disciplines, ranging from geography and cultural studies to urban planning. Summarising the relationship of place and identity, Cliff Hague reminds us ‘that places are places (and not just spaces) because they have identity. Place identities are formed through a milieu of feelings, meanings, experiences, memories and actions that, while ultimately personal, are substantially filtered through social structures and fostered through socialisation.’ (Hague 2005, 7) Thus, place identities are relational, that is formed in relation to other people, other places and other identities for that place, and encapsulated within power relations and other relations. A commonly accepted division of place-identity processes locate them at the national, regional, local and, perhaps, supranational (e.g. European Union) level (Amundsen 2001).
Phenomenological tools, elaborated by such humanistic geographers as Yi-Fu Tuan, Anne Buttimer and Edward Relph, emphasise the role of various forms of human experience and types of subjectivity. This conceptualisation of space and place in Soviet Sortavala will also draw from theoretizing on Heidegger’s idea of the primacy of dwelling over building. For the German philosopher, dwelling is inextricably connected with notions of rootedness and situatedness; in this context, fixity and stability are two major ideas for defining and understanding place (Heidegger 1971; see also Cooper 2008 and Cresswell 2009). In this sense, Sortavala’s old Finnish landmarks and the wooden barracks, constructed as temporary dormitories in the 1950s, but still inhabited today, as well as the ugly residential blocks built in the 1960s and 1970s are not just built environment but
evidence of how place has been perceived and how people have identified with place.
Here, the difference between the contemporary Western world and Soviet or Russian realities in regard to the role of place, already alluded to in the first part of this section, requires some additional comment. Despite this difference, both worlds are said to be affected by a crisis of place, which is due to a loss of democratic control over it. However, whereas the Western crisis is a result of the onslaught of consumerism and globalisation, the Soviet crisis is a product of the socio-political and economic system of communism, and in particular the massive displacement of populations caused by modernisation, industrialisation and other All-Soviet projects. The urban historian Kenny Cupers, in his attempt to rethink space and identity in the light of present trends of urban life, has argued that space can be re-conceptualised as being fundamentally constituted by past and present ideologies (Cupers 2005, 734). In his opinion, contemporary disorganised capitalism not only creates a differential space, as opposed to the homogeneous space of organised capitalism, but, moreover, results in a fundamental multiplicity of spatialities where old and new ideologies, homogeneous and differential space, coexist. This leads Cupers to the conclusion that space can be envisaged as ‘a palimpsest 12 of historical layers’ some of which have disappeared while others remain active in constituting identities. This in turn implies that urban identities should be re-conceptualised as well. They are to be interpreted as identities in the always unfinished process of interactions in a space that is contaminated by others and whose outlines are blurred. Identity formation is said to take place in spaces that are occupied by difference and that are full of traces of past identities and memories, allowing us to read the city in terms of the presence of uncertain, uncontrolled identities in contested spaces undergoing transformation (ibid. 737).
Russian humanist geographer Ivan Mitin in his mythogeography also interprets place as a ‘palimpsest’ characterised by multiple co-existing semiological systems (Mitin 2005). Similar arguments could be made in the case of Sortavala, with its multilayered history and culture.
1.3.2 Territoriality, positionality and borders
This analysis leads to another key concept of geography, that of territoriality, which can be defined as the appropriation of place through the reiteration of social practices based on a sense of place and cognitive images that are related to it (Ellingsen 2003, 5). As a result, personal identities are linked to a community and a territory, that is a social construction embedded in the socio-cultural processes that give it meaning and shape a cultural identity. Drawing on political theory, Robert
12 In textual studies, a palimpsest is a manuscript page from which the text has been scraped or washed off to reuse page for another document.
D. Sack has postulated that ‘territoriality is a primary geographical expression of social power. It is the means by which space and society are interrelated.’ (Sack 1986, 5) He sees territoriality as embedded in social relations. Thus, territories are produced by people and become the spatial containers within which people are socialised, a notion that will be used to metaphorically describe Sortavala as a
‘container of migrants’, whose socialisation process and perception of the territory will be analysed in an historical perspective.
Geographical studies obviously focus on the spatial or territorial dimension of identity, or, in the words of David Harvey: ‘Human beings have typically produced a nested hierarchy of spatial scales within which to organise their activities and understand their world. (…) The case of changing territorialisation clearly shows that there is nothing “natural” about political boundaries even if natural features have often played some kind of role in their definition. Territorialisation is, in the end, an outcome of political struggles and decisions made in a context of technological and political-economic conditions.’ (Harvey 2000, 75) In the case of post-war Sortavala, the main political boundary has, of course, been the nearby state border. For this reason, the study of local identity formation rooted in territory will pay particular attention to historical geopolitical contexts and the geopolitical visions of ordinary citizens. At a more general level, this is a well-studied subject in both Western and Russian academic publications.
The concepts of positionality and identity are closely related, because both refer to processes of self-location in various spheres of life: political, social, cultural etc.
By creating discourses of their positions, individuals and groups construct a sense of belonging. The idea of positionality defines people not in terms of fixed identities, but locate them within shifting relationships. It understands people with respect to power.
‘Identity is about being positioned and investing in a particular (subjective) position. This process of positioning cannot be understood outside discourse and power. […] Identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves in, the narratives of the past.’ (Hall 1990, 225.)
Accordingly, positionality is seen here as a process that reflects interrelations between social positions and the social effects of structure and agency (Anthias 2002; 2008). Similarly, local identity construction can be conceived as a process of
‘geopolitical positionality’ as analysed by Gearoid O’Tuathail (1996; 2006). His starting point is the Foucaldian premise that geography, as a discourse, is a form of power and knowledge. Thus, a critical re-conceptualisation of traditional geopolitics is needed and discursive positionality offers an alternative to critically question issues of identity.
A recently published study employs the positionality concept for examining influence of boundary on Karelian borderland communitities (see Kortelainen and Rannikko 2015). Similarly, it can be asked how does this approach apply to Sortavala? In my articles examining post-Soviet Sortavala, it is argued that the
